Navy and Marine Corps strike fighter aviators face a dangerous loss of air flow while flying.
They're set to suffer more than 100 of these hazardous and potentially fatal incidents this year for the second time; one Navy F/A-18 Hornet squadron reported two in a week.
Now, Congress is moving to demand an independent review of the breathing air and decompression problems plaguing the F/A-18 Hornet and EA-18G Growler fleets, which stem from complex air flow systems the Navy has spent years trying to repair.
The congresswoman who made the problem public in February, Rep. Niki Tsongas, D-Mass., is calling for Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to choose a senior official in his office to review the Navy and Marine Corps' efforts to fix the problems and to consult technical and medical experts from outside the Defense Department.

The Navy has plans to boost its F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler capabilities in the coming years to match an evolving threat, but plane manufacturer Boeing is still pushing for conformal fuel tanks, an advanced cockpit system and a new engine that the company says would add even more range and warfighting capability.
Given tight budgets and a long list of needs for the Navy, Boeing F/A-18 and EA-18G programs vice president Dan Gillian said the company has scaled down its F-18 add-on list since a 2013 proposal for an Advanced Super Hornet.

The Canadian government wants to acquire the Super Hornet to fill its fighter-jet capability gap on an interim basis, a move that would also take the pressure off the country’s prime minister on the thorny political issue of the F-35.
Liberal Party Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had promised during last year’s election campaign his government would never buy the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, but that plane is still favored by Canada’s air force.
Any decision to exclude the F-35 from a competition to acquire new jets could also spark a messy legal battle.
But the proposed deal to buy Super Hornets on an interim basis would push off any fighter competition well into the late 2020s, allowing Trudeau to keep his election promise while dealing with the issue of replacing the country’s aging fleet of CF-18 jets.

Boeing is modifying 30 legacy F/A-18C Hornets recovered from the aircraft “boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base to a “C+” standard at the request of the U.S. Marine Corps.
The updated strike fighters will support two new squadrons, the manufacturer said.
Thus far, Boeing has delivered two F/A-18C+ fighters to the Marines from its maintenance facility at Cecil Field, Fla.
Five more fighters were undergoing the update and four were expected to arrive by September.

A year ago, Navy and Marine Corps leaders gave a dire warning to Congress: Budget cuts have hurt nondeployed units and could cost lives during a major conflict.
The losses happened, but not in combat.
Pilots died training at home.
Since May, four F/A-18 Hornet or F/A-18E/F Super Hornet crashes involving nondeployed units killed two pilots and destroyed five planes.
The crashes are the latest in a sharp increase in military aviation accidents overall for nondeployed squadrons, which have absorbed the bulk of budget cuts through reduced training and delayed maintenance at home so the best aircraft and personnel can be used on the front lines.

The US Navy has revived interest in studying a major upgrade of the engine that powers the Boeing F/A-18E/F, EA-18G and two foreign fighters, including the possible addition of new technologies.
In early February, Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) notified industry that it would ask GE Aviation to submit a proposal for a contract for the company’s engineers to perform a study on an “F414-GE-400 core enhancement evaluation”.
Such notifications are required when the government plans to award a contract without inviting competing bids.
No other details about the contents or objectives of the study were provided in NAVAIR study, which is described only as an assessment of “how upgrades ... could improve engine performance, as well as F/A-18E/F and EA-18G performance”.

During his time at the Boeing facilities, Trump met with a number of company executives, including Muilenburg.
A pool report noted that before the speech, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus was holding a brochure for the F/A-18 XT — another name for the “Block 3” or Advanced Super Hornet.
That model is being considered as a potential rival to the F-35C, the naval variant designed to take off from an aircraft carrier.

The U.S. Navy is back in the business of buying F/A-18 Super Hornets and Boeing is working to update the aircraft to meet warfighting needs.
“There is a general acceptance of the need to buy more aircraft to meet the fleet’s shortfall,” said Dan Gillian, Boeing’s vice president for F/A-18 and E/A-18G programs.
Boeing’s strike fighter, he said, is “a low-risk, low-cost aircraft with improved capabilities.”
In some ways, Boeing updated its Advanced Super Hornet (ASH) package unveiled in 2013 to meet changed requirements.
The ASH, Gillian pointed out, had several stealth features that were considered no longer necessary in a carrier wing that would include F-35C stealth fighters, and the revamped offering, dubbed Block III, is geared more to warfighting and aircraft performance and less to concealment efforts.

Compared to a Lockheed Martin F-35C, a Block III Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet will be able to detect and track stealth aircraft at long range by their heat emissions and carry a full load of external weapons for significantly longer distances, says Boeing programme manager Dan Gillian.
By filling these two claimed capability gaps, Boeing believes it can preserve the F/A-18E/Fs presence on aircraft carrier decks well into the 2040s and extend a once-threatened production line in St. Louis, Missouri, far into the 2020s.

The US Navy is upgrading its Boeing F/A-18E/F fighters with an improved Lockheed Martin IRST21 sensor system, allowing the Super Hornet fleet to see and detect farther.
Lockheed received two contracts worth $100 million through prime contractor Boeing and will provide advanced software development, hardware upgrades and prototype deliveries as part of the Block 2 IRST package.

Boeing believes an upcoming service life extension of its Super Hornet fleet, set to begin next year, would be an optimum time for the Navy to build in new upgrades, add conformal fuel tanks and to make it more stealthy.
The Navy and Boeing are currently negotiating the first service life modification (SLM) contract — expected to be awarded early 2018 — which will lay out the structural modifications the company will conduct to extend the life of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet from 6,000 to 9,000 flight hours.
But for an additional cost, the company could also upgrade the Super Hornets to the more advanced Block III configuration during the modification period, said Mark Sears, Boeing’s director of SLM.

The first US Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet to receive service life modification upgrades will arrive at Boeing’s St. Louis facility next April and will leave with an additional 3,000 flight hours of service life, Boeing’s vice president of F/A-18 programmes tells FlightGlobal.
Unlike the legacy Hornet fleet, the Super Hornet modification will not entail one large replacement such as the centre barrel, says Dan Gillian.
Instead, modifications will be distributed across the aircraft with a focus on corrosion, a perennial hurdle for the carrier-based aircraft.

Naval officers aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln demonstrated for the first time the ability to remotely take control of an aircraft and land it on an aircraft carrier’s deck.
Using the ATARI system, or aircraft terminal approach remote inceptor, landing signal officers demonstrated remote piloting of the F/A-18E Super Hornet while conducting carrier qualifications and flight testing aboard the Abraham Lincoln in March.
The officers also demonstrated touch-and-go manoeuvres with the system.

In a swift reversal of fortunes, Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet production line now has a seven-year backlog after nearly expiring two years ago due to a lack of orders.
In March, Kuwait ordered 22 F/A-18E and six F/A-18F Super Hornets for delivery through 202, with options for 12 more.
During the same month, Congress topped off the US Navy’s request list with 10 more Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets, worth $739 million.
In all, the Navy is buying 24 Super Hornets for a sum of $1.8 billion in fiscal 2018, with more than 100 additional fighters planned for procurement over the next five years.

The Block III Super Hornet is getting a marginal increase in stealth capability, but if you’re expecting the invisible aircraft of President Donald Trump’s dreams, think again.
Building a “stealthy” Super Hornet has been one of Trump’s talking points since he was elected to the presidency.
During a March trip to Boeing’s plant in St. Louis, he claimed the U.S. military would buy Super Hornets with “the latest and the greatest stealth and a lot of things on that plane that people don’t even know about.”
Trump was referring to one of the Super Hornet’s Block III upgrades slated to be incorporated on jets rolling off the production line in 2020: the application of radar absorbent materials or RAM, also known as stealth coating.
But far from being “the latest and greatest,” the company has already used the exact same materials on the on the Block II Super Hornet to help decrease the chances of radar detection, said Dan Gillian, who manages Boeing’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and E/A-18G Growler.
Block III jets will get “a little more” of that coating applied to them, “and in a few different areas to buy a little bit more performance,” Gillian told Defense News in a March interview.

Naval Air Warfare Center intends to award a sole source contract to Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems to upgrade infrared and radar systems aboard the US Navy’s Boeing F/A-18 and E/A-18G aircraft.
The USN is contracting Raytheon to upgrade the aircraft’s Advanced Targeting Forward-Looking Infrared (ATFLIR), and the AN/APG-65, AN/APG-73 and AN/APG-79 radars.
The service announced its intention online on 9 May to grant the contract to Raytheon without a bidding competition because the company is the sole designer, developer and manufacturer of the systems.

Two Boeing F/A-18E/Fs have demonstrated a sensor fusion capability that combines the data from multiple sensors on both aircraft in near real-time as the programme launches production of the Block III version of the 20-year-old, carrier-based fighter, says Bob Kornegay, business development manager for the F/A-18E/F and EA-18G Programs at Boeing.
Lockheed Martin’s F-35 is most often associated with a sensor fusion capability that dramatically improves the data available to any single pilot in a strike package, but the F/A-18E/F fleet has been steadily catching up to its stealthy, sister aircraft’s most advanced capabilities.

Boeing has started design work to upgrade the US Navy’s (USN) fleet of EA-18G Growler electronic warfare aircraft.
The upgraded aircraft will be designated Growler Block II and include features already on the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, such as the advanced cockpit system and conformal fuel tanks.
It will include improved sensors and an upgraded electronic attack package.
Earlier this year Boeing was working with the US Navy on initial architecture studies when when it received funding for the work.
This helped it solidify requirements and move the Growler Block II design toward a system functional requirements review later in 2019.

The US Navy (USN) flew two Boeing EA-18G Growlers as autonomous unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), using a third Growler as a flight controller.
In total, four flights were conducted at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, with tests starting in September 2019, says manufacturer Boeing on 4 February (*).
The aircraft demonstrated 21 missions during flights that took place toward the end of 2019, says Boeing.
The type of missions were not disclosed.

Boeing delivered the first F/A-18E/F Super Hornet with a 1,500h service-life extension to the US Navy (USN) on 21 January.
The US manufacturer plans to deliver the second service-life-extended Super Hornet by the end of February, with a third to be handed to the service in April, it says on 6 February (*).
The Service Life Modification programme initially extends the aircraft’s usability from 6,000h to 7,500h.

The Navy’s request to end the F/A-18E-F Super Hornet production line after 2021 instead of signing another multiyear production contract was not to save money, but rather to allow manufacturer Boeing to convert the production line from building new planes to overhauling old ones at a rate of 40 per year.
The Navy is managing a shifting fighter fleet, which today only sends fourth-generation Super Hornets on deployments but by next year will begin its transition into a blend of fourth- and fifth-gen fighters, once the first squadron of F-35C Joint Strike Fighters heads out with the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group.